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Once on his feet, he moved carefully towards the bed.

Was this how it felt to be drunk, he wondered?

Unsteady and dizzy, seeing colours as too bright, edges of objects sharply defined?

It could not be. This was not pleasant. No one would willingly seek out these sensations.

He halted at the edge of the bed. He dreaded checking the bandages on Kennit’s leg, but he knew he should.

He might still be bleeding. If he was, Wintrow had no idea what he would do.

Despair, he decided. He reached gingerly for the edge of the blanket.

‘Don’t wake him, please.’

Etta’s voice was so gentle he almost did not recognize it.

He turned his whole body towards her. She was seated in a chair in the corner of the room.

There were hollows under her eyes that he had not noticed before.

Dark blue fabric overlay her lap while she plied a busy needle.

She looked up at him, bit off a thread, turned her work, and began a new seam.

‘I have to see if he’s still bleeding.’ His words sounded thick and misshapen to his ears.

‘He doesn’t seem to be. However, if you disturb the bandages to check the wound, you might start blood flowing. Best to leave well enough alone.’

‘Has he awakened at all?’ His mind was starting to clear itself.

‘Briefly. Right after you…brought him back. I gave him water, lots of it. Then he dozed off again. He’s slept ever since.’

Wintrow rubbed at his eyes. ‘How long has that been?’

‘Nearly all night,’ she told him placidly. ‘It will be dawn soon.’

He could not fathom her kindly manner towards him.

It was not that she looked at him warmly or smiled.

Rather something was gone from her voice, an edge of jealousy or distrust that had always been there before now.

Wintrow was glad that she didn’t seem to hate him any more, but he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it.

‘Well,’ he said inanely. ‘I suppose I should go back to sleep for a while then.’

‘Sleep where you were,’ she suggested. ‘It’s clean and warm in here. You’re close to Kennit in case he needs you.’

‘Thank you,’ he said awkwardly. He was not sure that he wanted to sleep on the deck here.

His bed would be the deck no matter where he went on the ship, but the thought of having a stranger watching him while he slept was unnerving.

What happened next was even stranger. She shook out the work on her lap, holding it up between them, her eyes going from him to her needlework and back again.

It was a pair of trousers, and she was obviously eyeing him to see if they would fit.

He felt like he should say something, but he did not know what.

She folded it back into her lap without comment.

She threaded her needle again and resumed her work.

He returned to his blanket on the floor, rather like a dog returning to its designated spot.

He sat, but could not bring himself to lie down.

Instead, he shawled the blanket over his shoulders.

He looked at Etta until she returned his gaze.

‘How did you become a pirate?’ he abruptly asked her.

He hadn’t realized he was going to speak until the words popped out.

She took a breath, then spoke thoughtfully.

There was no trace of regret in her voice.

‘I worked as a whore in a house in Divvytown. Kennit took a liking to me. One day I helped him kill some men who attacked him there. Afterwards, he took me out of the whorehouse and brought me here. At first, I was not sure why he had brought me to his ship, or what he expected of me. However, after a time, his thought became clear to me. I could be much more than a whore, if I chose to. He was giving me the chance.’

He stared at her. Her words had shocked him.

Not her admission that she had killed men for Kennit; he had expected that of this pirate.

She had called herself a whore. That was a man’s word, a shame-word flung at a woman.

But she did not seem ashamed. She wielded the word like a sword, slicing away all his preconceptions of who she was.

She had earned her living by her sex, and she did not seem to regret it.

It roused a strange shivering of interest in him.

She suddenly seemed a more powerful creature than she had just moments ago.

‘What were you before you were a whore?’ Unaccustomed to speaking the word, he put too much emphasis on it.

He had not meant it to sound that way, he had not meant to ask that question at all. Had Vivacia nudged him to it?

She frowned at him, thinking he rebuked her. Her eyes were straight and flat as she said, ‘I was a whore’s daughter.’ A note of challenge crept into her voice as she asked in turn, ‘And what were you, before your father made you a slave on his ship?’

‘I was a priest of Sa. At least, I was in training to be one.’

She lifted one eyebrow. ‘Really? I’d rather be a whore.’

Her words ended their conversation irrevocably.

There was nothing he could say in reply.

He did not feel offended. She had pointed up the vast gulf between them in a way that denied they could communicate at all, let alone offend one another.

She went back to her sewing, her head bent over her work.

Her face was carefully expressionless. Wintrow felt he had lost a chance.

Moments ago, it had seemed that she had opened a door to him.

Now the barrier was back, solid as ever.

Why should he care, he asked himself, for the depth of his disappointment surprised him?

Because she was a back door to influencing Kennit, because he might need her goodwill someday, the sly part of himself suggested.

Wintrow pushed the thought aside. Because she, too, is a creation of Sa, he told himself firmly.

I should reach out to befriend her for herself, not for any influence she has with Kennit.

Nor because she is unlike any woman I have ever known at all and I cannot resist the puzzle of her.

He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to sweep aside all social artifice. When he spoke, his words were sincere. ‘Please. Can we try again? I’d like to be friends.’

Etta looked up in surprise. Then her expression changed to a humourless smile. ‘In case I can save your life later? By intervening with Kennit?’

‘No!’ he protested.

‘That’s good. Because I have no influence over Kennit that way.’ Her voice dropped a note. ‘What there is between Kennit and me, I would not use that way.’

Wintrow sensed an opening. ‘I would not ask you to. I just…it would be nice to talk to someone. Just to talk. So much has befallen me recently. My friends are all dead, my father despises me, the slaves I helped do not seem to recall what I did for them, I suspect Sa’Adar would like to do away with me…

’ His voice trailed away as he realized how self-pitying he sounded.

He took a breath, but what came out next sounded even whinier.

‘I’m more alone than I’ve ever been. And I have no idea of what will become of me next. ’

‘Who ever does?’ Etta asked him heartlessly.

‘I used to,’ he said quietly. His thoughts turned inward as he spoke.

‘When I was at the monastery, life seemed to stretch out before me like a shining road. I knew I would continue my studies. I knew I excelled at my chosen work. I genuinely loved my life. I had no desire to change any of it. Then I was summoned home, my grandfather died, and my father forced me to serve aboard the ship. Since then, I have had no say in my life. Every time I tried to take control of it, I only bent it in a stranger direction.’

She bit off her thread. ‘Sounds normal to me.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘I do not know. Perhaps it is, for other folk. I only know it was not what I was accustomed to, nor what I expected. I keep trying to think of a way to get back to where I was and restore my life to what it is supposed to be, but –’

‘You can’t go back,’ she told him bluntly.

Her voice was neither kind nor unkind. ‘That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is “supposed to be”.’ She lifted her eyes and her gaze stabbed him.

‘Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.’ Wintrow was stunned.

Heartless as her words were, they brimmed with wisdom.

Almost reflexively, he sank into meditation breathing, as if this were a teaching direct from Sa’s scrolls.

He explored her idea, following it to its logical conclusions.

Yes, these thoughts were of Sa, and worthy.

Accept. Begin anew. Find humility again.

Pre-judging his life, that was what he had been doing.

Always his greatest flaw, Berandol had warned him.

There was opportunity for good here, if he would just reach out towards it.

Why had he been bent on returning to his monastery, as if Sa could only be found there?

What had he just said to Etta? That the more he tried to take control of his life, the further he bent it.

It was no wonder. He had been setting himself in opposition to Sa’s will for him.

He suddenly grasped how the slaves must have felt when the shackles were loosed from their ankles and wrists. Her words had freed him. He could let go of his self-imposed goals. He would lift up his eyes and look around him and see where Sa’s way beckoned him most clearly.